12th October

I'd been to my friend Rob's party on his houseboat in Canary Wharf. I spent a lot of time talking to a girl who worked in P.R who was posh and blonde.
Caught the tube at about ten past twelve, getting off at Green Park and changing to the Victoria line, only to see the last train southbound speed off. This gave me pause for thought. I hadn't yet completed an ofif project that evening. I was in the centre of London though.
The problem with the centre of cities though is that they seem to offer so much but don't always provide. Coming out of the tube station I looked over the road to 'Cheers' and saw swathes of people lacking in clothes queuing up to get inside. It was a bit of a depressing sight. I could join them. But then I thought that I could walk all the way back home - to Crystal Palace, a journey of 6 miles, since something was bound to happen along the way. An ofif project would be bound to fall in to my lap.
But then pessimism took over, as did a number three bus. I ran to catch up with it, and I succeeded. But seeing a mass of people trying to get on, I shunned the suggestion from my head and bimbled along towards the Thames.
Just coming up to Parliament Square, a couple of girls stopped me to ask if I knew of any hostels nearby.
'Yes, there's one in Victoria I think.'
'Oh' they chorused.
'But it might be either fully booked or closed now.'
'The thing is,' one of them said, 'we're trying to get back to Bromley where my Mum is staying, but we missed the last train.'
The ofif had landed. I grabbed it's horns and suggested that we:
'share a taxi. I was planning to walk back to Crystal Palace, which is on the way to Bromley, so I could get off then and you two could continue south.'
They turned to each other for agreement, which they both got, and said 'ok' to me.

But we really needed to get hold of a minicab. A black taxi would cost a small fortune, so we walked for ages - over the Bridge to Waterloo and then all the way in to Kennington. As we did so, the two Israeli girls, one of whom was called Daphne had the occasional private conversation, no doubt concerning why the hell they were trusting a man with an eighties leather jacket in one of the most dangerous areas of London.

But they didn't know that second fact. Anyway, we walked on, and couldn't find a minicab place. So, having realised my grip on the bull's horns was slightly less now, I offered them two choices. We could either 'go in to that bar over there, and have a drink whilst we wait for a minicab to come and pick us up or we could get the next number three bus back to my house and then you could order a taxi from there. This bar charges three pounds per head to get in.'

I've got to say. The girls were slightly odd. They looked about 17 but were actually (or apparently) 23 years old and I couldn't work out if they were very intelligent or very stupid. One of them was very pretty with large dark brown eyes.

Thoughts did crop up in to my head of suggesting we had a threesome. I wondered if they were thinking the same thing, and that's what this whole thing was about. They had stopped me in the street, asked where a hostel was, and then, my failing to get the 'gist' of what they were implying, led to their acceptance of us sharing a taxi - with the implication there being that they would come back to my house and we would have sex.

But then I realised my thougts were snowballing - and towards a very icy lake. So I asked one of them what the time was. It was half past two.

The conclusion of this whole story was not, obviously, sex. We waited for about half an hour in Kennignton for a number three bus to turn up, and then we caught it and were ferried to a point ten minutes from my door. We got out, I felt briefly like I was the kindest person in the world, then Daphne got a call from a fiercely worried mother asking why the hell they were going back to a random man's house.

A very good, but natural question from a mother.

We got back to mine where I gave them tea and toasted a couple of 'buns', and they commented on the size of my house, and then I found out that they were both incredibly rich and had houses about twice the size of mine. Then the taxi arrived, I wrapped up the toasted 'buns' in some tin foil for them, they scalded their lips a little after trying to drink their tea a bit too fast, then scribbled down their email addresses, and I said goodbye to them. We didn't hug.

And I went upstairs to fluff my pillows, feeling warm that I had helped two random people out, and successful that an ofif project hadn't passed me by. The conclusion of this Friday was that it is good to meet new people, and that if you set off on a long journey home, things are bound to happen.